Coming Soon: QR Codes and Mobile Websites

About a year ago, they started popping up everywhere – from magazine ads to real estate signs to direct mail postcards. At first, people wondered, “What is that barcode doing on an ad?!” Today, most people are familiar with QR (quick response) codes, yet still most advertisers don’t use QR codes as well as they could.

1. You want people to be able to interact. A mobile-enabled landing page or microsite is one that makes it easy for visitors to interact – fill out a form for more information, for example – from their smartphone. A mobile-enabled site, then, is more than one that just re-sizes for the mobile screen, it’s one that minimizes fancy scripted graphics (which take longer to load on a phone) and makes forms easy to fill out and submit.

2. You want people to feel like they came to the right place. It is always the case that you want the experience of responding to a call to action to reflect the call to action itself, and that is absolutely true here. The direct mail piece where you have your QR code should have the same look and feel (colors, graphics, fonts) and the microsite or landing page people go to when they scan the code. Also remember to carry over your content – the themes, anyway. What you say on the website should reinforce what you’ve said (about benefits, for example), in the mailer. Your offer and call to action should be consistent. You want people who come to the site from the mailer to feel like they get what they expected.

In that vein, you should personalize the site at least to the mailer that people will be coming from (another reason why the QR code should direct people to a landing page or microsite rather than your Home page). For example, one customer recently did a direct mail campaign started by a postcard that whetted recipients’ appetites for the box of cookies that would follow; the cookie box included a QR code that directed recipients to a page with a graphic of a half-eaten cookie and a crumb-trail leading to the headline, “We hope you enjoyed the cookies, now here’s one more treat: a free white paper that can help you increase business.”

Soon, Click2Mail makes it all easy

We can’t talk about the details just yet, but soon you’ll be able to easily create QR codes for your direct mail piece and a mobile website right within the Click2Mail system. No longer will you have to go to one place to create the QR code, another place to create the mobile website, and then come to Click2Mail to design, print, and mail. (Exciting, right?!)

Using QR codes on Click2Mail products

With Click2Mail you can put a QR code on any mailer. In the article Success Stories: Boosting Response with the Same Investment - QR Codes and Direct Mail we offer some examples of ways Click2Mail customers have used QR codes. Check the article out for full details, but to briefly recap:

Real estate agent Sarah J. prints a QR code on the "For Sale" property flyers she mails out to her database of about 500 prospective buyers in the Phoenix area. The full-color single-page flyer self-mailer includes a brief description of the property, a range of enticing photos, and the QR code.

William B. – a life insurance sales agent in Minneapolis - uses QR codes with Click2Mail's Easy Letter Sender. Like GEICO, William positions the QR code so that it's visible through the envelope picture window - mail recipients can scan the code even before they open the letter.

Jose P., who owns a landscape service company in California, includes QR codes on his jumbo postcard, which link to a customer’s 2-minute video testimonial about Jose's services.

So stay tuned for our official announcement and details on how you can create QR codes, mobile websites, and print your QR code mailer from Click2Mail.com. In the meantime, if you have questions you can reach us by phone at 1-866-665-2787 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).